-13_The Poet and the Yogi

 

IT is at times said that a critic, at least a successful critic, is a poet who has failed. Likewise the poet himself is a Yogi who has failed. That is to say, to be a good and genuine poet one has first to be a Yogi. Is it really so? Just to prove it a French priest has even gone to the length of writing a book.¹ Of course, Abbé Brémond has not used the term 'Yogi' but 'mystic', and prayer, he adds, is the inherent virtue of a mystic. We can then hold that a Yogi, a spiritual aspirant or even a mere aspirant – on the whole they mean the same.

According to Brémond, a poet is he who has either fallen from the status of a mystic or has deviated from the path of inner discipline. He is of the opinion that the fount of a poet's inspiration, insight and feeling is either a spiritual experience or an experience inclined towards spirituality. But the poet has not marched forward in a straight line to the original Goal; nor has he even attempted to give it a shape. After covering half the distance he halts for a time and then moves on through by-lanes, putting forward the secret experience of his inner soul in the decorative dress of flowery words. He simply looks upon the experience as something imaginary, dream-like and an object of fancy produced by the intellect. At last it comes to this that he grows into a poet to the same extent as he has kept aloof from the path of a mystic. For to proceed on straight along the path of spirituality is to avoid the by-lanes of poetry, i.e., to extinguish

 

¹ Prière Poésie, par I'Abbè H. Brémond (de l'Acadèmie Française). 

inevitably all poetry and poetic inspiration.

Let us pin our attention on the first thing first: whether the poet is at all a Yogi or a Sadhaka and, if so, in what sense. It is not quite uncommon that in the creation of almost every poet we observe more or less the indication of something beyond the grasp of the senses, something divine and infinite. The aspiration of every poet flies to an immaculate realm of Beauty and Truth, to a world beyond. Milton, Wordsworth and Dante need no introduction in this field, for they are undoubtedly spiritual. They seriously resorted to spirituality. But it is strange enough how Shakespeare, whose creation is replete with nature's scenes and the experiences of man's day-to-day life, says:

 

            With thoughts above the reaches of our souls, 

or, 

There's a divinity that shapes our ends

Rough hew them how we will.

 

Do we not then feel that Shakespeare's inner soul is in the closest touch with the Consciousness beyond, far surpassing the earth, and his poetic vision has been surcharged with some intense superhuman delight? Even the poets who are most materialistic, who are averse to any Ideal, who are anti-divine, whatever may be their outer utterance – are they not the descendants of Lucifer or Prometheus? Let us recollect what Baudelaire wrote about them, about the pangs of their hearts:

 

           Une Idée, une Forme, un Être

           Parti de I' azur et tombè

            Dans un Styx bourbeux et plombé,

            Ou nul oeil du Ciel ne pénètre. 

            (An Idea, a Form, a Being

            That sprang from the blue and fell

             In the muddy grey river of Hell

             Unpierced by Heaven's seeing.)

 

In our country also Rabindranath Tagore's name needs no mention. A spiritual aspiration pervades his poetic inspiration. It is evident that this spiritual aspiration is the source of his poetic creation. But let us listen to Madhusudan, the so-called iconoclast:

 

Where is the world of the Brahman?

Where am I, a worthless creature of evil?

How can I, a mere human,

Enmeshed in the world's illusion,

Like a bird in a cage,

Attain that world of Freedom whose vision

Draws the Adept of the highest Yoga from age to age?

 

Even at the very commencement of his immortal epic, Meghnadbadh he invokes Saraswati the white-armed Mother of knowledge. The feeling or firm conviction is that the Mother of Knowledge is also the giver of liberation. That is why the poetry that is a help and a means to attain liberation has a special appeal to our heart.

Of course, there are poets whose creations totally lack spirituality or even something akin to it. For example, Catullus, of whom Sri Aurobindo says: "He has as much philosophy in him as a red ant."

A poet like Catullus can easily be put forward to contradict Bremond's conclusion. Granted, such poets are very few in number, nevertheless they appear to prove Bremond's conclusion quite baseless. But, as a matter of fact, it is not so. The aim of a poet is to create a living thing, a thing of considerable worth, a thing of beauty and delight with the help of words. Is not this very act of his something supernal 

aspiring for the world beyond?

The very same truth has been uttered by Vishwanath Kaviraj. The real form or soul of poetry consists of delight. The delight one gets in the realisation of the Brahman and the delight one derives from one's poetic creation spring from the same source. Both have an indivisible consciousness of self-expressive delight. Indeed it is a serious matter that demands our special attention. Both of them have no relation with outer objects, nor does their self-supporting delight of consciousness reckon on things of the material world. I have already said that the theme of the poet may not be spiritual; even then he derives from a subtle consciousness all his poetic inspiration.

The author of Sahitya Darpan (The Mirror of Literature) tells us something profound and significant as regards the spiritual nature or form in poetic creation. The delight of poetry can be grasped neither by impure, lifeless and rigid qualities nor by restless vitalistic movements; it is reflected in Sattwic virtues alone. Hence the poet creates something only after he has been surcharged with Sattwic qualities. Further, the purpose of reading poetry is to arouse the qualities of sattva in oneself and to move towards our nature's purification and emancipation, free from the evil contact of rajas and tamas. We may as well recollect here the similar .conclusion the Greek thinker, Aristotle, arrived at, that a tragedy has katharsis, a power to purge the heart. However, it is doubtful if anybody has raised the greatness of poetry to such a pitch as Vishwanath Kaviraj has done.

Fundamentally there is no difference between Vishwanath Kaviraj and Abbe Bremond. The difference that does exist is not about the source of poetry but about its culmination. According to Bremond, the inner inspiration of the poet or the source of it is a spiritual experience. He also adds to it that the poet descends into a lower level of nature the moment he endeavours to mould his experience into words and tries to give it a metrical shape without following the straight 

yogic process, without assimilating the inner divinity into his entire being; he has spread it out and lost it in the display of words. So he has to give himself up to falsehood and play tricks. The thing that has to be manifested with the effort of his life has been totally exhausted in easy trifles and meaningless words. He has grown into an artist displaying false and baseless words instead of becoming an artist of life. In the place of having a genuine full realisation he becomes enamoured of the visionary illusive creation of a nine-day wonder. He has been fascinated, as it were, by the dance of the nymphs and has deviated from the real path. It is not that at times the poet does not feel that his creation is simply a jugglery of words. Strangely enough, with the help of fruitless words a modern poet proves the worthlessness of words:

 

            Je suis las des gestes intérieurs,

            Je suis las des départs intérieurs!

            Et de I'hèoisme a coups de plume

            Et d'une beauté toute en formules !

Charles Vildrac – "Livre d' amour"

 

            (I am sick of imaginary gestures,

            I am sick of mental expeditions!

            And of the bravery of the pen-stroke

            And of a beauty all formulated.)

 

Aristotle's preceptor, Plato, draws our attention to this side of poetry – the illusory charming power of poetry. No doubt, the world of the poet is charming. But it is equally the world of falsehood. Plato was religious to the marrow. The main cause of his looking upon the poets with considerable displeasure is that in their creations – e.g. Homer – the gods have an inferior nature even to that of a human being. It is an absurdity on the face of it. Having turned falsehood and an evil ideal into a thing of grace and delight 

the poets place it before man and thus they keep him away from truth, beauty and bliss.

Of course, it cannot be affirmed that in the poetic creation there can be no illusory power of Ignorance. No doubt, there are poets who have either blurred their spirituality or their inner soul by resorting to poetry. But in that case we can safely affirm that it is the poet and not his poetic creation that is in fault. It is absolutely a personal affair. If things are to be judged in this light, then there is not even a single object which does not stand as an obstacle to one's inner spiritual discipline.

So we cannot at once jump to the conclusion that a poet is he who has either fallen from the status of a Yogi or who has slipped down from the path of yogic discipline. Just an example will dispel all doubts. The poets of the Upanishads were at once seers and yogis in the fullest measure. As the Upanishads are wonderful in their poetic values, even so are they highly inspiring and soul-stirring in their mantric powers. Here the poet and the seer have become one and with their mutual help they reveal each other. It is not that vak (speech) must needs be a covering of or an illusory substitute for truth. It can as well be the most beautiful and benevolent image of the Brahman as Sound.

Be that as it may, it can never be said that a poet and a Yogi are one and the same, or that there is no difference between the poetic creation and the spiritual discipline. To say that they are one is nothing short of an hyperbole: The consciousness of the poet dwells in the world of speech and this world belongs to the mental world. The light of the poet's inner soul illumines this mental world of speech and turns it into a seeker of spirituality. But the field of a Yogi is more spacious and more objective. He endeavours to illumine the body and the vital nature with the light of spirituality. The poet can start doing this work. He may even be an aid to it; still more, at the end he may reveal or announce

the Victory. But the poet cannot sit on the throne of a Yogi by dethroning him. Moreover, it is not obligatory that in order to be a Yogi one must be a poet first. Even if the Poetic Being is a brother to the Brahman, yet it is not the Brahman itself.